The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

308 The syntax of early Englishstatus, and that subsequently new specifier elements are introduced. In thehistory of English, this is precisely what we do find. However, from our perspectivein this book, it is important to distinguish between the relevant synchronicstages, and to consider at each of them what evidence was available tothe language learner. We will see that at each stage, we find structurallyidentifiable correlates for the status of the elements in question.Let us now consider in some detail the relevant facts from the various stagesof the history of English, beginning with Old English (for general discussion ofnegation in Old English, the reader is referred to Mourek 1903, Einenkel 1912and Mitchell 1985: §§ 1596 ff.). Old English is a negative concord language,which means that a logically negative sentence can contain more than one negativemarker. As we saw above, negative sentences always have ne preceding thefinite verb, for which we assume that it is a negative head. We distinguish sententialnegation from constituent negation, as motivated in van Kemenade(1999: 148–9). This narrows down our cases to those instances in which noconstituent reading is possible, as in, for instance, (21) above. This is even morestraightforward in the standard case where sentential negation is predominantlymarked by ne alone: consider some standard examples as in (23):(23) a. ne sende se deofol a fyr of heofenum, eah e hit ufannot-sent the devil the fire of heaven though it from-abovecomecame‘the devil did not send fire from heaven, though it came from above’(ÆCHom I(Pref) 6.13)b. Nolde se Hælend for his bene swaeah hym fram gewitannot-wanted the Lord for his prayer however him from depart‘The Lord did not want to leave him because of his prayer’(ÆHom 15.199)In these examples, which are run of the mill cases of negation with ne alone,negation negates the sentence as a whole: there simply is no constituent negationreading available.Let us now look at some negation patterns. We will take Classical OldEnglish as our starting point. This will give us a perspective from which to considerthe oldest English of the early poetry, where the evidence is somewhatpatchy. After that, we build up the picture into Middle English and beyond,concluding with a discussion of the diachronic scenario from the point of viewof the issues under discussion in this chapter.The dominant and extremely common pattern of sentential negation inClassical Old English is, without a doubt, that in which sentential negation isexpressed by ne alone. In the vast majority of cases, such sentences are negative-initial,as in (23) above.